Yahoo Acquires SkyPhrase For Natural Language Processing

Yahoo announced today that it has acquired SkyPhrase, a developer of natural language processing technology. The company will become part of Yahoo Labs.

“The team of four has built amazing natural language processing technology and we’re excited to welcome them to our Yahoo Labs team in New York,” Yahoo says in a blog post.

“At SkyPhrase, we believe online information and services would be much more powerful and user friendly if people could tell computers what they want to accomplish using natural language,” the SkyPhrase team says in its own announcement. “The technology we developed enables computers to understand more complex and precise human language than ever before.”

“In Yahoo, we have found a company that not only shares our vision, but delivers a rich collection of information and services to a massive user base,” it adds. “We are excited to join Yahoo Labs to continue to work on our shared vision of making computers deeply understand people’s natural language and intentions. We can’t wait to take things to the next level together.”

From the sound of it, SkyPhrase’s technology will likely be used for fantasy sports (among other things). TechCrunch notes that the company has created an app that makes it easier to find fantasy football stats that are relevant to making picks and monitoring teams.